The House Of Lanyon. Valerie Anand

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СКАЧАТЬ women. Had he waited? Would he be there?

      He was. There was his pony, hobbled and grazing by the track, and there was Christopher, his hair as bright as fire, sitting on the plinth.

      “Christopher!”

      He was looking the other way, perhaps expecting her to come along the main track instead of through the field, but he sprang up at the sound of her voice, and turned toward her. She ran into his arms and they closed about her. “Oh, Christopher! I’m so glad to see you!”

      “Are you? What is it, sweeting? Something’s wrong, isn’t it? I can always tell.”

      “Yes, I know you can!”

      That was how it had been from the beginning, when they met in the spring, at the May Day fair in Dunster. It had been a fine day, and the fair was packed and raucous. There were extra stalls as well as the regular ones, offering every imaginable commodity: gloves, pottery, kitchen pans and fire irons, hats, belts, buckles, cheap trinkets, questionable remedies for assorted ills, lengths of silk and linen from far away as well as the local woollen cloth, sweet cakes and savoury snacks cooked on the spot over beds of glowing charcoal. There were entertainments, too: a juggler, tumblers, a minstrel playing a lute and singing, a troupe of dancers and a sword swallower.

      And, creating an alleyway through the crowd and inspiring a different mood among the onlookers, an unhappy man stripped to the waist except for a length of undyed cloth slung around his neck. Splashed with dirt and marked with bruises, he was escorted by the two men who that year were Dunster’s constables. Ahead of them walked a boy banging a drum for the crowd’s attention and announcing that by order of the Weavers Guild of Dunster, here came Bart Webber, who had been mixing flax with his woollen yarn to make his cloth, and selling it as pure Dunster wool, and had been fined for it at the last manor court.

      It could have been worse. The hapless Master Webber hadn’t been whipped or put in the stocks, and the crowd was good-humoured and not in a mood for brutality. Many of them knew him socially, which inclined them to restraint or even, in some cases, sympathy. He was still drawing a few jeers, though, and an occasional missile—handfuls of mud and one or two mouldy onions, which had caused the bruises. His situation was quite wretched enough and his face was a mask of misery and embarrassment. Liza, distressed, turned quickly away.

      Her parents had often told her she felt things too deeply and ought to be more sensible. They clicked regretful tongues when she persisted in going for walks on her own or when they found her in the garden after dark—“mooning after the moon,” as her father put it—or being stunned by the splendour of the constellation of Orion, making its mighty pattern in the winter sky. Yes, Nicholas said, of course the moon looked like a silver dish—or a lopsided face or a little curved boat, depending on which phase it was in—and yes, of course the stars were beautiful. But most people had more sense than to stand outside catching cold, especially when there was work to be done indoors.

      Sometimes Liza felt that she was dedicating her entire life to appearing sensible when inside herself, she often didn’t feel sensible at all, but wild and vulnerable, like a red deer hind, fleeing before the hounds.

      Now she wanted to get well away from poor Bart Webber. Elena and Laurence, who were with her, stayed to stare but Liza, abandoning them, edged back through the crowd. Then she realised that a young man who had been standing next to Laurence had turned away, too, and was beside her and seemed to want to speak to her. She looked at him in surprise, and he said kindly, “You didn’t like seeing that, did you?”

      She stopped and studied him. He wore a clerk’s black gown and a priest’s tonsure. The ring of hair left by the tonsure was an astonishing shade of flame-red. “I know him,” she said. “Bart Webber. He’s dined with us. No, I didn’t like seeing him—like that.” It occurred to her that the young clerk had been watching her and that this was impertinent of him. With a rush of indignation she said, “You were looking at me?”

      “Forgive me,” he said mildly. “But when I saw you move away alone—well, in such a throng, you shouldn’t be on your own.”

      “I was with cousins, but they’re still back there. I’ve other relatives somewhere about, though, and my home is over there.” She pointed.

      “Let me walk with you to your door, or until you find some of your family.” His voice was intentionally gentle, cooling her flash of annoyance. “You never know. There could be cutpurses about.”

      She let him escort her and as they walked, they talked. He was Christopher Clerk, halfway to priesthood, studying with the chaplain at the castle. She was Liza Weaver, daughter of Nicholas Weaver who, with his family, owned three Dunster houses and was head of a business which carried on both spinning and weaving. “Our cloth’s quite well-known, and so is my mother’s special fine thread.”

      “You sound as though you’re proud of your family,” he said.

      “I am! And you must be proud of your vocation, and of living in a castle! Is it very grand, with paintings and carpets from the east and silken cushions for the ladies?”

      “All those things, but my quarters are plain, as they should be. I wouldn’t have it otherwise. I felt called to be a priest, and once that happens, a man doesn’t seek to live in luxury.”

      “Do you mean you give it up even though you miss it, or you somehow don’t miss it because you don’t want it anymore?” Liza asked, interested. She often caught sight of the Abbot of Cleeve and his entourage of monks coming and going from their house and had many times wondered what made them choose such lives. Were they happy, always wearing such plain white wool garments and never marrying?

      “Some of us cease wanting the pleasures of the senses,” Christopher told her, “and others give them up. They are the price. But if you really value something, you don’t mind paying for it.”

      “But which group are you in?” Liza asked acutely, and privately marvelled at her own outspokenness. He might well accuse her of impertinence! Yet it seemed easy to talk to him, as easy as though she had known him all her life.

      “I’m among those who have to make an effort. But as I said, the price is worth it.” She turned her head to look at his face and he gave her a grin, a tough, cheerful, entirely masculine grin, and she found herself smiling back. His eyes, which were the warm golden-brown of amber or sweet chestnuts, glowed with laughter, and without warning, her breath seemed to halt for a moment and her heart turned a somersault.

      “I won’t say it’s always easy,” he said, searching her face with his eyes, and she knew, without further explanation, with a certainty that would not be denied, a certainty as solid as the simple fact that two plus two made four, that now, this moment, was a time when it wasn’t easy. That he was talking, obliquely, about her.

      About them.

      About us. But we met only five minutes ago!

      At that moment she caught sight of her parents, apparently arguing and just going in at their door, for dinner no doubt, since it was past noon. With a few words of farewell and thanks for his company, she took her leave of Christopher and followed them into the house, to find that an argument was indeed in progress, and that it was about Bart Webber.

      “To my mind, Margaret, it’s enough, what he went through today. There’s no need to keep on about it and say we can’t have him and Alison to dine or ask them to Liza’s wedding when it comes….”

      “I don’t agree, Nicholas. I can’t. СКАЧАТЬ